Robert M. Frankston (born June 14, 1949 in Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

 New York) is the co-creator with Dan Bricklin of the VisiCalc

VisiCalc

VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet program available for personal computers. It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool...

 spreadsheet program and the co-founder of Software Arts

Software Arts

Software Arts was a software company founded by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston in 1979 to develop VisiCalc, which was published by a separate company, Personal Software Inc...

, the company that developed it.

Frankston graduated in 1966 from Stuyvesant High School

Stuyvesant High School

Stuyvesant High School , commonly referred to as Stuy , is a New York City public high school that specializes in mathematics and science. The school opened in 1904 on Manhattan's East Side and moved to a new building in Battery Park City in 1992. Stuyvesant is noted for its strong academic...

 in New York City and in 1970 from M.I.T.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

Frankston has received numerous honors and awards for his work:

• Fellow
  Fellow
  A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term fellow is also used to describe a person, particularly by those in the upper social classes. It is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who are awarded...
  
   of the Association for Computing Machinery
  Association for Computing Machinery
  The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...
  
   (1994) "for the invention of VisiCalc, a new metaphor for data manipulation that galvanized the personal computing industry"
• MIT William L. Stewart Award for co-founding the M.I.T. Student Information Processing Board.
• The Association for Computing Machinery Software System Award (1985)
• The MIT LCS Industrial Achievement Award
• The Washington Award (2001) from the Western Society of Engineers
  Western Society of Engineers
  The Western Society of Engineers is a professional and educational organization founded in Chicago, U.S. on May 25, 1869 as the Civil Engineers' Club of the Northwest. In 1880 the club was incorporated as the Western Society of Engineers. The organization is devoted to the development of...
  
   (with Bricklin)
• Fellow of the Computer History Museum
  Computer History Museum
  The Computer History Museum is a museum established in 1996 in Mountain View, California, USA. The Museum is dedicated to preserving and presenting the stories and artifacts of the information age, and exploring the computing revolution and its impact on our lives.-History:The museum's origins...
  
  

In recent years, Frankston has been an outspoken advocate for reducing the role of telecommunications companies in the evolution of the internet, particularly with respect to broadband and mobile communications. He coined the term "Regulatorium" to describe what he considers collusion between telecommunication companies and their regulators that prevents change.

External links

• Bob Frankston's site/blog
• Biographical article from Smart Computing